September 2018
Table of Contents
A Not-So-Final Note from the Editor ...... 1 From the Trenches ...... 6 HWA Chapter Tee-Shirt Design Now Available ...... 8 HWA Online Writing Group ...... 10 Update on the HWA Cookbook ...... 11 The Seers Table ...... 12 Chapter Updates ...... 17 Utah Chapter Update ...... 18 Pennsylvania Chapter Update ...... 19 Las Vegas Chapter Update ...... 24 San Diego Chapter Update ...... 26 San Francisco Bay Chapter Update ...... 29 Wisconsin Chapter Update ...... 31 LA Chapter Update ...... 33 HWAColorado Update ...... 34 Calendar of Readings and Signings ...... 35 Blood and Spades ...... 37 NY Chapter Update ...... 42 Recently Born of Horrific Minds ...... 45 Brain Matter ...... 50 The Grumpy Grammarian: That Word ...... 53 Haunted Travels: The Bone Chapel ...... 56 Authors for the September KGB Reading Series ...... 63 Watchung’s Horror Watch ...... 64 Frightful Fun ...... 68 Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them) ...... 71 It’s a Strange, Strange World ...... 75 HWA Events – Current for 2018 ...... 78 In The Spooklight ...... 80 HWA Market Report #276 ...... 83 Welcome to the HWA! ...... 86 Advertisements ...... 90 Straight to Hell ...... 91 A Not-So-Final Note from the Editor
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Kathryn Ptacek
It’s here! Well, almost here, actually. And what the heck is “it”? That would be the October Issue of the Newsletter, wherein I run a ton of articles and columns and poetry and art and photos and special fun things just for you, HWA Members. I’ve already started working on the issue, and I’m still looking for stuff … Got any ideas or suggestions? E-mail me soon. Thanks!
Remember the recent “movie” theme issue? I have a couple of ideas for future themed issues. What about you? Got some ideas? Let me know!
Also, don’t forget to send me some art and photos for the “Sinister Slideshow” located just above the editorial. Most of the time, I want these to be connected to a theme each month, which I’ll probably post on the HWA Facebook page or in upcoming editorials. Got some great ideas to toss my way? I love nature photos—especially when they are atmospheric. I run six or seven of these photos. Please do not send something that is truly mammoth; it does weird stuff to my E-mail program, which is fragile enough without being burdened with a 10 MG photo. Thanks.
Also, I’d LOVE to see what you as a writer (or artist or editor or whatever) do for marketing and promotion of your work. I want to run these useful bits in upcoming issues; if I get enough, I could have something in every issue. Now, wouldn’t that be swell? The marketing tips and techniques (Blog crawls? Thrilling tweets? Press releases? Radio interviews? Chile cook-offs? Helpful podcasts? Slideshow presentations? Book signings? Spooky séances?) should be no longer than a page or two. Thanks. I will be running these in a special column one of these days: Marketing Mojo! So send me the tips you’d like to share!
And don’t forget: I am still interested in knowing where you work; it’s something that fascinates me: where does a creative person create? Do you have a cozy shed out in the backyard where you can get away from it all? Do you spread out all your notebooks and pens across a wide-planked verandah as you lean back in your wicker chair? Have you snagged a spot in the quiet living room, the noisy laundry room, the musty basement? Are you camping out in a garret? Do you have an actual office set aside, filled with all the
1 incredibly neat stuff that serious writers and artists need and seem to accumulate? Let me know where you work and include a photo or two and a line or two or three about the space. I’ll be running these in a few months. I might have lost some in the Great E-mail Program Implosion a few months back, so let me know if you don’t see your workspace. I’m hoping to start running these soon.
And, as always, I’d like to see articles (or perhaps columns) on the following:
– YA horror (writing, marketing, etc.)
– unusual stuff out in the horror world
– writing plays
– writing films
– writing stuff we don’t know much about
– writing horror commercial jingles
– publicity and marketing
– media tie-ins and novelizations
– writing computer games
– collaborations (the good, the bad, and the ugly)
– horror subgenres (historical, sf, mystery, etc.)
– horror photography
– unusual hobbies and/or collections of horror folk (not books or art. Book and art collecting is not an unusual thing in our field.)
– the ups and downs, ins and outs of self-publishing
– horror in other countries
– writer archives/university and public library collections
– different kinds of horror/trends
– what happens when a writer dies (this is about the estate, not decomposition of the actual body)
– the late great giants of the field
– what folks in the field see for the future of the genre
– write-ups of conventions, workshops, residencies, etc.
– humor in horror
– horror arts and crafts
2 – horror and television
– horror and the stage
– horror cosplay
– horror crafts
– horror field trips (places to visit: Lizzie Borden’s house, Poe’s grave, Satan Sells Seashells by the Seashore, Cthulhu Caverns, The Editor’s Demonic Slope, etc.)
– religion in horror
– overviews of stuff (what kind of stuff? Well, YOU are the one pitching the idea to me, after all; come up with some good stuff!)
– sex and the single horror writer, aka erotica and horror
– horror maps and geography and real and not-real places
– the horror writer and social media
– the history of horror
– an in-depth article or two about occult/paranormal detectives or perhaps even a series??
– a look at book and story titles, good and bad—and why is it so difficult to come up with snappy intriguing hook-that-reader-right in titles?
– ghost hunters/paranormal investigation
– horror tropes—old and new
– pen names … aye or nay, and the pros and cons of hiding your identity
– how to write enticing, entertaining, engaging, enlightening jacket copy without giving away twists and the ending
– horror newsy bits
– reviews … love ’em or leave them? And how does a writer get the latest book out there to be reviewed?
– horror decorating (why is it so hard to find creepy dishes and spooky pillows and funky dust collectors outside of the Halloween season, which starts in August, by the way, at some stores, so get those Cthulhu shopping bags ready!? And just where do you find cobweb curtains?)
– horror art, book covers, posters, etc.
– discussions with librarians, editors, etc.
– this and that … the list goes on.
3 What I do NOT want to see:
– blog-y posts
– movie and/or TV show reviews
– blog-y posts
– book reviews
– blog-y posts
– Web site reviews
– blog-y posts
– Ph.D. dissertations (Yes, someone sent one once. Really.)
– blog-y posts
– opinion pieces
– blog-y posts
– puff pieces disguised as articles
– blog-y posts
– biographies of candy monsters
– blog-y posts
– articles under a page in length (I like a little meat on the bones, so to speak)
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts
– blog-y posts (I cannot say this enough. Apparently. I don’t want YOUR opinion in 100 words … I want YOU to talk to someone; I want YOU to do a little research; I want YOU to think outside the blog. I have no problem with blogs … on blogs. I just don’t want to see blog-y stuff in this publication. Really. I know I keep harping on it, but I guess I will have to continue to be that whining mosquito in your non-blog-y ear.)
Query me first at [email protected], or you can send me a private message on Facebook. Do NOT query me in a post on my Facebook page or HWA’s page; I will delete it after getting excessively grumpy and grousy.
4 And don’t forget to send photos of your book signings and readings and seminars and dictionary-tossing contests and other writerly events. Really. I would like to see your bright shining faces behind that table at a convention or a book signing or whatever. Send stuff!
The deadline for each issue is ALWAYS the 15th of each month, so send your news/photos/whatever early to the proper person (Your local chapter! The calendar! Your fiendish item! Recent releases! There are so many options!)—that is, BEFORE the 15th and not on that date or shortly after because that’s when the columnists send me their stuff; they need YOUR stuff before the deadline, and they cannot put it in their columns if you don’t send them items! REMEMBER: This is all FREE promotion for you and your work! Month after month of free promotion with no strings attached! FREE! FREE! FREE! Please take advantage of that!
Don’t forget that you can purchase a display ad or two or three … The prices are very reasonable. Ad sizes are listed in the advertising link on the front page of the newsletter. Let other HWA members see what you’re doing! And there will be special ad rates available for the October issue. Be sure to check out the Advertising page on the HWA Web site (http://horror.org/newsletter-ads/).
As always, I would like to thank my horrifically fantastic proofreaders: Sheri White, Dean Wild, Naching Kassa, Marge Simon, Lori Gaudet, Chad McClendon, Joel Jacobs, Joseph VanBuren, Marty Young, Amanda Niehaus-Hard, Morven Westfield, Anthony Ambrogio, Greg Faherty, and Walter Jarvis. And thanks to Web Editor Donna K. Fitch for all her extremely hard work getting the newsletter put up at the HWA Newsletter Site! And thank Donna, too, for the new spiffy look of said publication!
The deadline for the hootin’-and-hollerin’ honkin’ huge Halloween-y edition!) OCTOBER issue is Saturday, September 15.
Whew.
5 From the Trenches
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Lisa Morton, HWA President
Many years ago—maybe five or six, long before I was President—I had a discussion on Facebook about how HWA could improve the Bram Stoker Awards®. It was still popular at that time to dismiss them as “the Strokers.” They took a lot of heat every time we announced finalists or winners.
Going to our partially-juried system helped a lot. But I wanted to do more.
One suggestion that came out of that discussion was to set up a Web site devoted exclusively to the awards. I loved that idea. I agreed with the author who suggested it (thank you, Jeff Vandermeer!) that it would be a way to gather the rules and history of the awards in one place, to celebrate the authors who’ve been nominated and won over the years, and to throw a little glitz into the equation. Not long after that, HWA registered http://www.thebramstokerawards.com.
But the Web site didn’t happen then.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what should go into it. I considered including, at various times, some actual award-winning fiction, interviews with authors, and more. It just looked incredibly daunting. Quotes from Web designers were far beyond what we could afford, and didn’t even include the hundreds of author listings that I envisioned.
So http://www.thebramstokerawards.com just sat, year after year, on the little white-board in my office that serves as my to-do list.
But we kept re-registering the domain name, and I kept thinking.
Finally, in 2018, the stars aligned at last. My schedule cleared up, and I had learned (for an unrelated project) how to dump large spreadsheets of data into a WordPress site in a way that would minimize the
6 work. We already had the awards on a spreadsheet. I saw a way, at last, to put the site together without costing HWA a fortune or eating up my life forever.
Now, the Web site is live. For the first time, we have a site that recognizes the history of the awards and the achievements of the more-than-700 authors who’ve been nominated and won. The site may not include free fiction or be quite as glamorous as I’d occasionally imagined, but I couldn’t be prouder of it. If you haven’t visited yet, head over to http://www.thebramstokerawards.com and take a stroll. Visit the “Fun Facts” page and you can even find out about the time that “The Bram Stoker Awards” was a category on JEOPARDY (and see if you can come up with the right JEOPARDY-style questions!).
7 HWA Chapter Tee-Shirt Design Now Available
By HWAWeb | September 2018
James Chambers
The New York Chapter of the HWA recently created a tee-shirt design for members to wear at events to create an impression on attendees, identify us as HWA members, and better brand our local chapter. One of our members then created the tee-shirt in an Amazon shop for sale via private link to members at cost-only to keep the price down.
The basic shirt design sells for about $12.90 in a choice of colors with the price varying with other options. You can see a sample of our NY Chapter version here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FZ8T6WJ. It’s easy to set up your own Amazon shop for this or to find other services that print custom shirts. This is a fun and inexpensive way for us to promote our chapter and the HWA. While creating this, we realized it may be of interest to other chapters—and how cool would it be to have a common, customizable tee-shirt design for chapters to share around the world? With that in mind, I’m happy to share this note from the shirt’s designer, Teel James Glenn. Any chapter that would like to make use of the design, please contact Teel for a link to the hi-res, customizable file.
8 Hi there, fellow horrible folk!
Here in New York we decided that the HWA local chapter needed some tee-shirts for recognition at events (you know how hard it is to tell us all from the “normal folk”—we tend to blend well enough to get close to our victims)—so I took an idea by Carol Gyzander and created a design based on a Ouija-type spirit board. It is an original design with no trademark or copyright issues for type or art (all checked and cleared) and ultimately approved by the national powers that be at HWA headquarters.
It then occurred to me that other chapters might have use for it as well. So I am prepared to send along the file for the design with our chapter name removed so the local chapters can put their name on it.
It would be nice to see lots of them at events like StokerCon™ or at events attended by local chapters to make our presence and origins known.
Teel James Glenn
9 HWA Online Writing Group
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Have you ever wanted to join a writing group, but haven’t had the time to go out and meet up with one? Well, you’re in luck! We’d like to introduce the HWA’s new Online Writing Group, Fright Club, led by author Moaner T. Lawrence.
A former assistant-editor at Pseudopod.org and contributor to Rue Morgue Magazine, Moaner will guide you through ten weeks dedicated to writing and refining fiction. Each participant will work on eight smaller pieces, intended to keep their fingers moving whilst working toward one bigger final piece. Be warned: Though pants are optional, and participation in the group is free, writing, critiquing, and regular attendance are mandatory for staying in the group!
Membership is exclusive to the HWA, so you’ll need to login to your member account in order to apply for the program. Each group is limited to ten members, and applications and admission will be ongoing. Sign up today!
10 Update on the HWA Cookbook
By HWAWeb | September 2018
News flash: Cookbook is stewing, folks! The wheels are in motion—send your recipes for main dishes and garnishes (or whatever is special for you in the fall season—and PHOTOS of you and food, or just the food or drinks. Send to Marge Simon([email protected] AND Bob Cabeen ([email protected])—starting NOW! Everyone we accept is a winner, but the big winner will get something special! So far, we only have one recipe and photo, so please take note!
More details from last month:
Annually, our editor Miz Ptacek provides us with a Halloween Themed Issue—the most fun our staff has during the year! This time, we’re again ready to give our members a chance to provide their favorite recipes. With Kathy’s blessing, we spice it up as a contest and are giving contestants consideration for inclusion in the final work as well.
We hope to collect a wide variety of culinary delights and devilish drinks as well as some very clever and/or hilarious photographs. Add to this, as our members are all about reading and writing horror, a number of the submissions can be cleverly contrived. Two years ago, Eric Guignard took the honors with a story to introduce his choice. Stories or poems to accompany a dish are encouraged and, if selected, will be included in the cookbook, along with your photos. Winners will get token prizes provided by Kathy Ptacek and a gorgeous certificate designed by Bob. Please submit to both of us: [email protected], [email protected]
Beastly Witches, Bob Cabeen and Marge Simon
THEME: Monstrous Main Dishes or Sinister Side Dishes.
Deadline: September 15, 2018!
11 The Seers Table
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Linda Addison,
12 Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community
September is National Preparedness Month, so prepare to read something different!
Linda Addison recommends
doungjai gam‘s short fiction has appeared in LampLight, Distant Dying Ember, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, Wicked Haunted, and the Necon E-Books Best of Flash Fiction Anthology series. Born in Thailand, she currently resides in southern Connecticut. Her first collection of poetry and short-shorts is currently available: glass slipper dreams, shattered. This book is filled with work that takes our breath away with a turn of a phrase, a dark play on words and images; every syllable paints unexpected shadows in our imagination.
Recommended Reading from: glass slipper dreams, shattered. that girl with the hair.
She sat alone at the bar sipping a colorful drink when he approached with whiskey bravado. She stared at him coolly with one eye, the other hidden underneath a brunette wave. She rejected his advances and excused herself to use the ladies’ room. He knew this trick, and quietly trailed her as she slipped out the side door. Before she left the alley, he grabbed her shoulder and whirled her around.
“Going somewhere?” He yanked her hair.
“No—please don’t,” she begged. He laughed as he pulled her closer and brushed her hair back to reveal her hidden eye.
“What the hell—?”
Moments later, she smiled as she fixed her hair, covering her right eye which, when covered, no longer glowed.
Another man turned into stone. With one touch he turned into rubble.
“I warned you.”
Follow the author at: https://doungjaigam.wordpress.com/.
13 LH Moore could tell you about the night she spent in the “Hut O’ Terror,” but she’d rather let you know that she is a writer and poet. Her speculative fiction short stories and poetry have been in magazines and numerous anthologies such as all three of the Dark Dreams‘ paranormal horror and suspense anthologies, as well as anthologies Sycorax’s Daughters (HWA Bram Stoker Award® finalist) and the 2018 anthology Black Magic Women edited by Sumiko Saulson.
She’s a historian with an MA in Historic Preservation from Goucher College; historical fiction and factual smackdowns are her specialty. She has also written articles for the African American National Biography series published by Harvard/Oxford U. Press. She is a DC native exiled in Maryland who loves classical guitar, architecture, gaming, and technology.
Recommended reading: Check out her story, “Here Kitty,” about a young woman who helps an older woman find her lost kitty in the anthology Black
Magic Women (Mocha Memoirs Press, LLC, 2018). Lawana Holland-Moore
The wooden steps creaked and felt unsteady under their weight as they went down. “Kiki? Kiiii-kiiii? Are you down here?” Mrs. Mills called out. Josie held onto the railing for dear life going down. The last thing that she wanted to do was trip and fall.
Even with the lights on, the cellar seemed dark. Ugh, I hate basements so much, Josie thought as she followed Mrs. Mills and the tap of her cane on the concrete floor.
Light filtered in through a narrow, bar-covered window, yet it still seemed dim and gray. Old chairs were stacked up in a corner. There were stacks of books and papers everywhere. A workbench covered with jars was in another corner. Who knows what is in those jars? Josie thought, shaking her head as they wound their way through the cellar. It wasn’t large, but the stacks and piles were like obstacles as they made their way through.
“You know, I would think that we would have heard her mewing or something before now though, especially
14 if she was stuck.”
Mrs. Mills stopped for a moment as if to think. “That is a very good point! I haven’t heard her meow or anything since this morning, either. That is rather strange. That is also pretty worrying as well. I am definitely worried that something’s happened to her now!”
Keep up with the author at Twitter at @ellehm; https://lhmoorecreative.com/. Credit: Photo of LH Moore by Matthew D’Agostino.
Lauren Salerno recommends
R.H. Stavis‘ first foray into the writing world began at the age of eighteen with the development of a screenplay with Sony Pictures called Honor’s Price. The story revolved around an undiscovered heroine during the Revolutionary War. Shortly after, R.H.’s popularity expanded globally with the fictional work for one of the most popular video game characters of all time, Lara Croft. As a result of Tomb Raider‘s success, R.H. has been interviewed by National Public Radio and has contributed an article entitled “Writing in Your 20s” for Writer’s Digest. Since that time, R.H. has worked on multiple novels, graphic novels, and video games, including Daniel’s Veil, Transformers: War for Cybertron, Tales from Moon Lake, and Something Monstrous. She enjoys long walks on the beach, fruity drinks, zombies, and the apocalypse.
Recommending her memoir: Sister of Darkness. The world’s only non-denominational exorcist—the subject of a forthcoming major motion picture—tells her astonishing true story: a riveting chronicle of wrestling entities from infected souls, showing how pain and trauma opens us to attachment from forces that drain our energy … and can even destroy our humanity. As a secular exorcist, Rachel H. Stavis has cleansed thousands of tormented people, from small children and Hollywood moguls to stay-at-home moms and politicians. But for many years, the horror screenwriter and novelist denied her gift. As a little girl, she began to see “monsters” floating around her bedroom or attached to other children. Told it was only her imagination, Rachel learned to ignore the things she saw. But a series of events in adulthood forced her to acknowledge her unique ability and embrace her power to heal. Since then, Rachel has dedicated her life to helping others cast off the forces feeding off of us. Performing her services pro bono, she quietly worked in the shadows, until she unknowingly revealed her work to a journalist, who told her story to NPR. A unique look at demonology removed from religious dogma, Sister of Darkness recounts Rachel’s journey to becoming an exorcist and chronicles some of her most extreme cleansings cases, including those that put her and her clients in peril. Going deep into her world, we meet the diverse range of people she has helped—young, old, famous and not—in gripping stories of danger and sometimes sadness, that are ultimately about redemption. Rachel teaches us that there is a diverse range of “entities” surrounding us—some of these are playful or misguided, while some are dangerous and harmful. She introduces each of
15 them and explains their power, helping us understand what is attacking and hurting us, and what we can do to protect ourselves. Frightening, eye-opening, and utterly enthralling, Sister of Darkness brings to light a world ruled by destruction, chaos, and fear, and the woman who bravely fights to protect those who seek her out.
For more information, follow R.H. at http://twitter.com/rhstavis.
Janet Joyce Holden recommends
Wendy Heard was born in San Francisco and has lived most of her life in Los Angeles. When not writing, she can be found hiking the Griffith Park trails, taking the Metro and then questioning this decision, and haunting local bookstores.
Recommended reading: Hunting Annabelle.
“Her scream echoes in my memory. I know what happened. Whether anyone believes me or not, I know.”
Sean Suh is done with killing. After serving three years in a psychiatric prison, he’s determined to stay away from temptation. But he can’t resist Annabelle—beautiful, confident, incandescent Annabelle—who alone can see past the monster to the man inside. The man he’s desperately trying to be.
Then Annabelle disappears.
Sean is sure she’s been kidnapped—he witnessed her being taken firsthand—but the police are convinced that Sean himself is at the center of this crime. And he must admit, his illness has caused him to “lose time” before. What if there’s more to what happened than he’s able to remember?
Though haunted by the fear that it might be better for Annabelle if he never finds her, Sean can’t bring himself to let go of her without a fight. To save her, he’ll have to do more than confront his own demons … He’ll have to let them loose.
Wendy’s latest novel, a chilling, deeply suspenseful page-turner set in the 1980s, Hunting Annabelle is a stunning debut that will leave you breathless to the very end.
For more information, follow the author at https://twitter.com/wendydheard.
16 Chapter Updates
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Colorado
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
New York
Pennsylvania
San Diego
San Francisco Bay
Utah
Wisconsin
17 Utah Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Joshua Sorenson
In the span of a month, we participated in two different conferences. The League of Utah Writers’ Fall Quill Conference was held August 24-25. The Chapter will also be in attendance at the Utah FAN-X Convention September 6-8.
Publications
The Infinite Monkeys Chapter of the League of Utah Writers has released its anthology, A Year of Monkeys, which features several of our members.
Monthly Meeting
The Utah HWA currently meets on the second Thursday of every month. Our September meeting will be held 7-9 p.m. (MST) on September 13 at the Sugarhouse Barnes & Noble (1104 E. 2100 S., Salt Lake City, UT). Please send any questions or news to Joshua P. Sorensen: [email protected].
18 Pennsylvania Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Kenn eth W. Cain`
August 11, 2018 Meeting Wrap-up
In attendance were Kenneth W. Cain, Todd Keisling, Allan Rozinski, and Pete Molnar, as well as guest Frank Michaels Errington. We also had two newcomers: Jacque Day Pallone and J.C. Walsh.
We started the meeting with introductions from new attendees. Jacque spoke of her previous employment, working for the movie STIR OF ECHOES. J.C. talked about his forthcoming self-published books as well as his recent experience at Necon.
19 Pete Molnar read a chapter from his forthcoming novel, Broken Birds, from Stitched Smile Press. He recently sold rights for a second novel, The Clockwork Lazarus, to the same publisher.
Allan Rozinski read his poem, “The Solace of the Farther Moon.” He recently had three poems—”Contact,” “Voyeur,” and “Breaking Bad”—accepted by The Literary Hatchet.
Kenneth W. Cain read from his forthcoming novella, A Season in Hell. He also has a new collection due out
20 this year (December 7) from Crystal Lake Publishing, entitled Darker Days. Also, CLP will be publishing (November 2) Tales from the Lake, Volume 5, which Ken edited. Ken recently sold a short story, “Detrition of War,” to an anthology entitled When the Clock Strikes 13.
Todd Keisling read more from his current work in progress, the novel Devil’s Creek.
After the readings, we discussed recent sales, successes and otherwise, potential markets, new and upcoming movies and series, and other standard topics.
21 We had a fun discussion, joked around some, and enjoyed the company.
Frank Michaels Errington has new reviews up at http://frankmichaelserrington.blogspot.com/.
22 We also discussed publishing an anthology, perhaps as a means of growing local interest in the chapter. We plan to look into attending Blobfest, a local fan festival that celebrates the movie, THE BLOB. And we’re always looking at new ideas to grow our membership while having fun, as we work to solidify the horror genre as a mainstay in Pennsylvania.
Our next meeting will be in early October (date and time not currently set). For more details, or if you wish to attend, please contact Kenneth on Facebook at either of his profile pages, through the chapter’s page, or through E-mail at [email protected]. Folks from New Jersey or Delaware, or even members who are just passing through, are all welcome to attend.
23 Las Vegas Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Mercedes Murdock Yardley
The Las Vegas chapter of the HWA had a great meeting at Count’s Vamp’d.
This month we’re having a guest come by to discuss his many horror projects in the works and to ask for some help making these plans come to fruition.
Tim Chizmar and Mercedes M. Yardley are taking their talents to California and are speaking together at the Diamond Valley Writer’s Guild on Saturday, September 22. Their topic will be “Scaring Yourself Successful: The Horror Renaissance.”
The chapter has also secured an HWA table at the Las Vegas Book Festival on Saturday, October 20. Please feel free to swing by and say hi at one of the biggest book festivals in the state of Nevada.
The Vegas chapter of the HWA meets on the last Thursday of every month at Count’s Vamp’d Rock Bar and Grill, 7 p.m.
24 25 San Diego Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
26 27 Alex Neumeister
The San Diego Chapter hosted the third annual HWA social gathering at the Hilton Odysea Lounge for San Diego Comic-Con International, allowing panelists and attendees to mingle. Around thirty HWA members and other horror professionals and fans attended. Most of us were out of costume at that point and the gale force winds coming from the bay drove us off the patio, but a good time was had by all. Watch this space for announcements regarding our fourth annual gathering in 2019!
The San Diego Chapter also collaborated with the LA chapter (including HWA President Lisa Morton!) to host the HWA table for our third Midsummer Scream Convention in Long Beach, which sold out for both days. Midsummer Scream brings together special effects artists, craftspeople, professional Haunters, and famous horror icons like Bela Lugosi Jr., Thora Birch, Tom Holland, Bill Moseley, and Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson! The weekend also featured a film festival, slide shows, and classes on spooky makeup, creepy cosplay, making evil floral arrangements, and more. Chapter members sold books, signed up fans and professionals for the HWA mailing list, and scared themselves silly in the many haunted houses set up for demonstration.
The San Diego HWA Chapter hosted a table at the San Diego Festival of Books on Saturday, August 25.
28 San Francisco Bay Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Ken Hueler
Bay Area Chapter Meeting Notes August 2018
Attending: Chad Schimke, Ken Hueler, E.M. Markoff, L.S. Johnson, Ben Monroe, Anthony De Rouen
We met in Borderlands Books in San Francisco, and welcomed new members Ben Monroe and Chad Schimke.
We also discussed what to put in a pinned post for our Facebook group.
Link to HWA site for those who want to join (we get a fair number of non-members asking to join our Facebook page). Link to our Google Group for those who want to work out sharing tables at events/put together panels. Guidelines about posting.
Ken Hueler will draft and get feedback.
Anthony De Rouen has begun selecting judges to choose films for the horror film festival next year. Some filmmakers have already expressed interest in submitting. He may add an actor’s panel for after the showings to increase audience participation.
We did a survey among ourselves as to why we joined HWA. Almost all of us did so because writers we liked/admired belonged to it, so sticking HWA in bio notes and such seems the best way to outreach. Additionally, Ben Monroe talked to us at our booth this year, and E.M. Markoff did the previous year.
L.S. Johnson says the Nebulas will be in LA in 2019, and we might want to brainstorm on ways to link up with that. Maybe partner with the SoCal HWA.
29 We discussed tables and who might go for Sinister Creature Con and Silicon Valley Comic Con.
L.S. Johnson brought up Payhip, a service that allows you to sell e-books directly.
Member accomplishments
Chad Schimke has a short story in the anthology Enter the Rebirth.
30 Wisconsin Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Chris Welch
Seeking both fun and inspiration? Of course, you are. Here are some upcoming events that might help.
The Fox Cities Festival of Books will take place October 8-14. There are many venues, programs, and categories covering a wide range of topics and genres regarding writing, publishing, and books.
Of special note, there will be a Horror Writers Panel, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at the Kaukauna Public Library. Panelists include horror writers Kat Köhler, James Lowder, Sarah Read, Richard Thomas, and Chris Welch. They will discuss writing in the horror genre, tools for new authors, publishing trends, and the importance of writing groups like the HWA.
For more information and a full schedule of events and their locations, visit the Web site (http://foxcitiesbookfestival.org/).
Windigo Fest is a celebration of all things Halloween, and it will take place October 5-7 in historic downtown Manitowoc on Franklin Street, right outside of the tourist destination Dead by Dawn Dead and Breakfast.
All Hallows Eve enthusiasts with a hunger for the strange and unusual can experience a weekend filled with various seasonal activities, including outstanding music, costume contests, dark art exhibits and contests,
31 bizarre performances, an historical cemetery bus tour, a parade, and more.
Come for the day or stay for the weekend … but don’t be caught dead without checking out the second annual All Hallows Eve Windigo Fest! For more information and schedule of events, visit the Web site (https://www.windigofest.com/).
The Milwaukee Paranormal Conference 2018 (its fourth year) will take place October 19-21—with a social gathering on October 19, the main conference day taking place October 20, and an activity day on October 21—at the Irish Cultural and Heritage Center, 2133 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Several authors, presenters, and panels are on the program, and there will be the Milwaukee premiere of the documentary THE BRAY ROAD BEAST, featuring a question-and-answer session with filmmaker Seth Breedlove and author/documentary subject Linda S. Godfrey.
The official conference after-party will be The Kraken’s Ball (following the tradition of year two’s Raven’s Ball and year three’s Jabberwocky’s Ball) the night of October 20 at the Cactus Club. There will be a costume contest inspired by creepy things that dwell in the oceans, lakes, and lagoons—think sea monsters, zombie pirates, killer mermaids, etc. Musicians and performers to be announced.
For more information, visit the Web site (https://milwaukeeparacon.com/).
The inaugural Para-Con in the Northwoods is sure to attract visitors from all over the Northwoods … and beyond! It will take place November 2-4, 2018, at the North Star Mohican Casino, located at W12180 County Road A in Bowler, Wisconsin.
Join North Star Mohican Casino Resort for a weekend swarming with the paranormal. Learn from experts covering everything from UFOs to Bigfoot to ghosts and much more! Venture to a local haunted site—a trip you won’t soon forget. Whether you fancy yourself a paranormal expert or you’re simply intrigued by unexplained phenomena, Para-Con in the Northwoods is an event you don’t want to miss.
Guest speakers include: The Beast of Bray Road author Linda Godfrey; Dave Schrader of the paranormal talk radio show Darkness on the Edge of Town; and author and paranormal researcher Jeff Belanger.
More to be announced.
32 LA Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
John Palisano
With over thirty people in attendance, the August meeting of the HWA LA was a spirited and inspiring affair. We began by discussing the many goings-ons with the upcoming StokerCon™ in Grand Rapids. It’s going to be wonderful and unforgettable.
We had a guest speaker with Kristen Renee Gorlitz, who has an idea on how we can promote our works through the new DropCard service.
Lisa Morton hinted at some of the new publishing projects the main HWA are putting together. Eric J. Guignard brought his usual flair and humor with his well-researched Market Listings. He also delighted us with ARC copies of some of his new releases from his Dark Moon Books publishing house. Our Round Robin was a blast as we heard from so many folks placing their works, and many more waiting on submissions. Mostly, though, we all were excited to realize the summer is soon winding down and we are closing in on Halloween!
Keep writing!
33 HWAColorado Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Larry Berry
Upcoming summer events turn to education. We’ll be hosting a two-hour event for chapter members with Becky LeJeune of Bond Literary Agent to talk about the 2018/19 market, as well as the perils and benefits of having an agent. RSVP is required for this event.
Also, we’ll be having a series of dinners at the Imperial Chinese where one of the Colorado Masters or Grand Masters talks about writing over the course of a long and fun evening. Again RSVP required. Date not yet decided.
On Tuesday, October 23 we partner with the Denver Library bringing horror to the Metropolitan Cafe. This is a public event.
Finally, HWAColorado is growing with satellite chapters in Boulder and Colorado Springs.
Interested in joining? Contact Larry at [email protected].
34 Calendar of Readings and Signings
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Scott “Essel” Pratt
Remember that you can always find out what’s going on by visiting the calendar of events on the HWA Web site. If you submit your information late, that information will show up only on that calendar and not in the newsletter. It is best to get your event information in early.
For all book-release announcements, please contact Lydia Peever for inclusion in her “Recently Born” column.
September
September 8-9: Cryptid Con: Cryptid Con is excited to offer fans the chance to go on an expedition in search of Bigfoot. This four-hour guided trek will be led by Charlie Raymond, experienced researcher and founder of the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization. The search for this elusive creature will take place in a location that has been featured on MONSTER QUEST and is an active area for Bigfoot sightings. Amateur Sasquatch hunters will get to try their hands at calling in a Squatch and capturing evidence to prove the existence of this legendary cryptid. Capital Plaza Hotel, 405 Wilkinson Blvd., Frankfort, KY. http://www.cryptidcon.com
September 15: CT Horror Fest: Since 2003, Horror News Network has been committed to bringing you the latest coverage of the hottest happenings in the world of horror. If it’s hot and it’s horror, our writers offer breaking news, in-depth interviews, and thoughtful reviews of the genre’s most popular movies, comics, books, games, collectibles, and live events. Danbury Arena, 1 Independence Way, Danbury, CT. http://www.horrornewsnetwork.net/ct-horror/
September 29-30: Sixth Annual Monster Con: Get ready! There’s going to be a Scream Queen beauty pageant, guest artists, writers, an art walk, over 100 vendors for shopping, photo ops, psychic fair, gaming, and more. All located in historic Wonderland of the Americas Mall. Free admission and parking. It doesn’t
35 get any better than that. 4522 Fredericksburg Rd., Balcones Heights, TX. (210)731-9931, https://ift.tt/2nSv6Mz
A reminder: This calendar is updated several times a week after information submitted about each event has been vetted for appropriate content. Appropriate content includes conventions, readings, signings, workshops, and other like events that HWA members may attend. It also includes deadlines for workshop applications and award nominations. It does not include solicitations for votes for awards/award nominations.
36 Blood and Spades
By HWAWeb | September 2018
37 Marge Simon
Last year on the Queen Mary, Kate Jonez told me she’d just attended John Lawson’s poetry reading and encouraged me to get him to write a column for the newsletter. I’m sorry to have missed his reading. However, I’m happy to welcome the man himself, co-founder of Raw Dog Screaming Press, John Edward Lawson. John’s novels, short fiction, and poetry have garnered nominations for numerous awards, including the Stoker and Wonderland Awards. In addition to being former editor-in-chief of The Dream People, he currently serves as vice-president of Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction.
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“I Don’t Like Poetry.”
John Edward Lawson
That’s a direct quote, and the highest praise I receive as a poet.
Another frequent comment in reviews, both online and in person, is “I’m not somebody who reads poetry.” Or, “Nobody told me poetry can be fun!” What then follows is the confession they enjoy my work, and are now exploring possibilities they didn’t previously believe existed in poetry.
Authors are advised to know our audience, and as a poet, I think mine seems to be those I’m not meant to reach. I both surprise and am surprised by these readers as they pass by my signing table in the entrance of
38 mall bookstores, as they search for food or live music at regional book festivals, or even when I send my collections for review in what are traditionally fiction venues.
How do we, as writers of dark and disturbing work, reach these reluctant poetry enthusiasts? Even worse, how can we appeal to those turned off by what they perceive as snobbery in the traditional poetry crowd? Recently I’ve been pondering this, and trying to reverse engineer the path I followed. The answer seems to be my penchant for experimentation.
Poetry is, in its entirety, an experiment for me, so it’s easy to make use of whatever inspiration comes my way. Something humorous? Something macabre? Something that plays with form? I tend to throw it all in together. Here’s an often-cited example from my collection The Troublesome Amputee.
Werewolf Limerick #1
There once was a werewolf from Nantucket who kept warm viscera in a bucket With sharpened talons and teeth he would rend human meat to get at the marrow and suck it
Reading that inspires a writerly cringe, but I still see the appeal. My limericks took a form so common it’s generally dismissed as literature, and with it delivered the unexpected. Of course, I was a fiction writer and aspiring screenwriter, so what was being risked in terms of reputation? It was easy enough to submit whatever took my fancy, because I had the fiction market to fall back on.
Werewolf limericks aside, horror writers tend to tell stories with their poems. Even non-readers are deeply attuned to storytelling when they stumble across it, be it in commercials or an anecdote at a party or a pre- game season recap or even when delivered in verse. Discovering that novelists like Weston Ochse and Wrath James White began as poets shouldn’t have surprised me. Many of my verse narratives could take five thousand words to successfully deliver in short story form, but when distilled to a poem occupy a single page, as in the following example.
Amaxophobia
The police in the station are blank-faced, cold like the sickly green-cast light and another suspect’s distant wailing Sitting across from interrogators makes you feel somehow old Even in silence you reach for this conversation’s brakes Staring at the photo your chest is tight You were captured by traffic cameras, lens after lens creeped after you as the driver, but … “Who’s the boy?” you ask, concealing panic and you learn that he’s gone missing, leaving behind all his belongings and some blood You’ve never seen him so the photos are wrong They have to be, you’ve been alone all along
39 His visage is sullen, resigned as if he has already died But perhaps that explains the cold spot on your right and the exonerating idea blossoming in your mind: for them to review the patrol car footage and discover an unseen passenger coming along for the ride in the back seat next to you, and later staring into the interview room camera on footage that will be “lost in the evidence room” … after all how can you be expected to control who hitches a ride with you after their demise?
Composing verse helped me greatly with both word economy and unexpected approaches to narrative. Such as mingling poetry and fiction. My first experience with haiku was a fourth grade writing assignment. The product was a haiku about two shipwreck survivors adrift at sea, snorting cocaine to stave off feelings of impending doom only to be wiped out by a tsunami. My teachers were not receptive, ending my haiku efforts until sixteen years later, when I read Fight Club. The use of haiku by the novel’s protagonist inspired me to add short form poetry into my writing regimen. This lead to one of my most well-received stories, “Consumable Leftovers” in my fiction collection Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades, in which the narrative is interspersed with haiku. An example: “A shrapnel shower / Does not come with free towels / Wipe your face clean … off.”
Alternately, playing with preexisting narratives has also proven a reliable hook for getting the attention of those otherwise immune to poetry’s charms. My replies to recognizable names in poetry, such as Sylvia Plath, or to well-known films and novels tend to get strong responses.
This is all fine, but naturally you have to be publishing or at least submitting work. A huge part of reaching the audience was recognition by my peers. The first reviews my writing received weren’t for the bulk of my work, the fiction, but for my debut poetry chapbook. Michael A. Arnzen led the way with commentary in Star*Line, commenting that he wished more genre poets pushed boundaries as I did, which emboldened me to continue doing so. Karen Newman was responsible for the first of my Rhysling Award nominations, and Stephen M. Wilson got the ball rolling for both my Stoker and Dwarf Stars Award nominations. These have all lent credibility when I go out on a limb doing concrete performance poems about parasites, and so forth.
That credibility has been stretched about as far as it can go. While working within the bounds of genre each collection has veered toward either bizarre humor or traditional forms with rhyming or twisted romance or postmodernism or outright violence. It’s my hope that finally, on my seventh outing, I’ve got a “real” poetry collection in my forthcoming Bibliophobia. Inspired by Stephanie M. Wytovich’s adherence to themed collections, and her ability to use that approach in freeing creativity as opposed to restraining it, each piece in Bibliophobia relates to a specific phobia. For once, all the elements are blending evenly, and the uniformity of subject itself is the variable that resonates. Test audiences distinctly uninterested in horror poetry are proving receptive to a volume based on phobias. In particular, performing the following elicits a strong response.
Odontophobia the cob is slick between your fingertips slathered with melted fat tissues, drenched in saliva — some of it is even yours — row upon row of enamel as your mouth clamps down on the cob its resistant curved buds crunch, forced loose, giving way to your penetration and you are rewarded with pain splinters of bone — some of them from your own mouth — working their way up and down between your teeth, wrenching them
40 apart with a deep-piercing resonant vibration in the bones of your face where you now realize things do not vibrate, and streaks of heat shoot through the front of your mind’s housing, which is quite unaccustomed to this scorching intensity, yet each bite widens the empty space on the tooth cob, each tooth’s smooth exterior giving way with a “pop!” and the crumbly core still resilient and abrasive as if you were chewing pumice and each time you take teeth from the cob you lose even more of your own, but a common way to deal with this is to employ one’s fork to pry teeth loose from the cob, intact, and jam them up and down into your own empty sockets which are now cisterns of blood overflowing — needless to say you must first stab bolts of pain through your being by digging the cracked roots out of your gums with those spike-equipped cob holders people use in order to avoid holding the cob itself … bone appétit.
Am I a good poet? I don’t know. But, unlike a lot of readers, I know this:
I do like poetry.
I’m somebody who reads poetry.
I’m aware poetry can be fun; it can be filled with horror.
For these things I owe the horror novelists and short story writers and screenwriters a great debt.
If you are one of them, or even thinking about becoming one, don’t be scared. Just take a simple look down at the dark path beneath your feet and know it can lead through poetry without compromise, while improving your fiction and snagging a new audience.
After all, I never intended to be a poet, yet here I am unafraid of poetry.
Megalophobia
You were afraid of large things, so you endeavored to keep me small as possible, confined me to the meat drawer of the refrigerator, the one dripping viscous fluid and deadly intent after filling with my pain. In consideration of your fear, now that I’m free, I will employ this knife to trim you down to a less wasteful portion.
41 NY Chapter Update
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Charie La Marr
42 The New York Chapter is winding up a very busy summer and looking forward to the fall.
After a rain delay and rescheduling, our Oasis Garden Summer Dark 2 Reading Series concluded on Friday, August 10, with readings from V. Peter Collins, Amy Grech, and Oliver Baird. There was a large crowd present to cap off a terrific summer of readings. We look forward to a third summer in the garden.
On Saturday, August 4, we launched New York State of Fright with a great publication party at Windfall in Manhattan. Several members attended. Alp Beck, Teel James Glenn, Marc Abbot, Steven Van Patten, and Erik T. Johnson read selections from their stories. Special thanks go out to Lisa Unger and Rachel Caine for donating books for the evening’s festivities. Editors James Chambers, April Grey, and Robert Masterson were present, along with Derrick Hussey from Hippocampus Press. Hippocampus (https://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/a-new-york-state-of-fright) or at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/New-York-State-Fright-Stories/dp/1614982279).
Teel James Glenn stayed after the launch to read a selection for the Goth party that followed. He got a nice write-up in Doktor John. http://doktorjohn.com/
James Chambers has a nice interview at Witch Haunt (https://www.witchhaunt.com/main-haunt/an-interview-with-james-chambers).
Here are our new releases.
Teel James Glenn has been busy: “Plague of Smiles” (a 100-word short) sold to Martian Magazine; “The
43 Red Sisterhood” (a feminist pirate tale) went to the Crossbones and Crosses anthology; “The Golding Fleece” (a con job gone wrong) will be in the October issue of Crimson Streets Magazine; Semper Occultus- the Occurrences of Dr. Argent, a linked collection of a Victorian Occult Detective tales, has been picked up by Pro se Productions for publication in 2019!
1. Ellington Ashton Press released Edward Cardillo‘s The Dark is Full of Monsters (https://tinyurl.com/ybo9oygm).
Charie D. La Marr has a story in the Vampz vz Wolvz 2 anthology published by J. Ellington Ashton Press (https://tinyurl.com/yannrq7n).
Marc Abbott says his children’s book, Etienne and the Stardust Express, was released August 17. It’s illustrated by Taren Atreides Lopez. https://tinyurl.com/y97j8xs4
Thanks to Jonathan Lees for maintaining our submissions list and Nancy Lambert for her work on our Web site.
44 Recently Born of Horrific Minds
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Lydia Peever
September is almost like a little October, judging from the slew of books listed here. Dust your shelves for the season, since Halloween is just around the corner and us authors won’t let you forget it! If not looking forward to creepy seasonal fare, some of these look back to the season just passed …
New Releases
Babylon Terminal Greg F. Gifune JournalStone 2018-09-28 http://journalstone.com/bookstore/babylon-terminal In a hallucinatory quest for redemption, Monk chases the woman he loves across a city of nightmares and into the wastelands. There unimaginable horrors and wonders await them both, and they soon learn there are realities far deadlier than their prison of darkness, his love for Julia, or a life together in the light.
The Horrors Hiding in Plain Sight Rebecca Rowland Dark Ink Books 2018-09-14 http://www.darkinkbooks.com/Dark_Ink/Horrors_Hidden.html The residents of Rebecca Rowland‘s universe dwell in the everyday realm of crime and punishment tempered with fixation and madness. There are no vampires, zombies, or magical beings within these walls; the monsters here don’t lurk under the bed or in the shadows, but they will unsettle you more than any supernatural being ever could.
Little Black Spots
45 John F.D. Taff Grey Matter Press, Chicago 2018-09-12
Little Black Spots
Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author John F.D. Taff—modern horror’s King of Pain—unveils Little Black Spots. Fifteen stories of dark horror fiction are gathered together for the first time, exposing the delicate blemishes and sinister blots that tarnish the human condition.
A Season in Hell Kenneth W. Cain Crystal Lake Publishing 2018-09-07 A Season in Hell When Dillon Peterson is honored for his baseball career, he must face a ghost that has long haunted him. That was the season he met the first and only woman to play baseball in the minor leagues. He sees what she goes through, what she must endure just to play the game both of them love, and this struggle leads to their friendship.
The Mouth of the Dark Tim Waggoner Flame Tree Press 2018-09-06 https://www.flametreepublishing.com/The-Mouth-of-the-Dark-ISBN-9781787580114.html Jayce’s daughter, Emory, is missing, lost in a dark, dangerous realm called Shadow. And he’ll do whatever it takes to find her, even if it means becoming a worse monster than the things that are trying to stop him.
Let There Be Dark Tim McWhorter Hydra Publications 2018-08-21 http://www.timmcwhorter.com Let There Be Dark is a collection of short stories full of ghostly phantoms, savage beasts, and the most frightening creature of all: humans. This horror collection from the author of Bone White reminds us why we should all fear the dark.
Previously Released
Ghosts, Goblins, Murder, and Madness: Twenty Tales of Halloween Rebecca Rowland, editor Dark Ink Books 2018-08-17 http://www.darkinkbooks.com/Dark_Ink/Ghosts,_Goblins.html Featuring twenty-one different voices hailing from five different countries and eleven states, this anthology of Halloween-themed stories provides a wide-angle lens on what comprises the unique expanse of horror fiction today. From hobgoblins and apparitions to haunted dwellings and cursed possessions, to good intentions gone awry and evil ones turned on the perpetrator, these tales will unsettle.
46 Into the Sounds Lee Murray Severed Press 2018-08-10 https://www.leemurray.info/into-the-sounds Sergeant Taine McKenna is back, this time in New Zealand’s isolated Fiordland sounds with a Department of Conservation deer-culling expedition. Unfortunately, the group are not the only hunters in the area, and when the tables turn unexpectedly, they become the prey.
Blood and Moonlight: The New Methuselah John Byron CreateSpace 2018-08-01 http://www.concretesalad.com They say that it is the winners who write the history. Winner or not, Mary Shelley has been the curator of the so-called “story” of Frankenstein’s monster, until now. After 200 years, someone’s itching to tell their account of the events at Lord Byron’s Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816, because Mary may have left a few things out.
Orphans of Wonderland Greg F. Gifune JournalStone 2018-07-27 http://journalstone.com/bookstore/orphans-of-wonderland/ Twenty years ago, journalist Joel Walker wrote a book about a ritual killing. It exploded into a bestseller and became part of the mass Satanic hysteria of the 1980s. When one of his childhood friends is brutally murdered and rumored to have been involved in bizarre medical experiments, Joel is lured back to his former home in Massachusetts to find out what really happened.
Feast of the Cannibal Guild Chuck Miller Airship 27 2018-07-24 http://theblackcentipede.blogspot.com/2018/07/return-of-bay-phantom.html When a shadowy group of criminals starts shaking down restaurants in Mobile, Joe Perrone once again dons the cloak and goggles of the Bay Phantom in order to combat the extortionists. Shortly thereafter, wealthy young men begin dropping dead without warning.
Death Wears a Top Hat Steph Minns Ellington Ashton Press 2018-07-24 https://stephminns.wixsite.com/author/book-1-inner Detective Sue McKentee and transgender psychic Alison Graves team up to solve a serial-killer case in London. The killer is possessed by a dark entity in this paranormal thriller.
The Moore House Tony Tremblay Twisted Publishing 2018-07-24
47 Described as Ghost Story meets The Exorcist, The Moore House will possess you, as well. Three excommunicated nuns, empaths, discover their presence is part of a larger plan. The Moore House is not only possessed, but it soon possesses them, forcing them to relive the sins that had resulted in their excommunications.
Deep Night Greg F. Gifune JournalStone 2018-07-13 http://journalstone.com/bookstore/deep-night/ For Seth Roman, his younger brother Raymond and their friends, it was supposed to be a few days of relaxation and fun, a getaway from their dull corporate jobs and troubled lives, a week of card playing and drinking at a cabin in the remote woods of northern Maine. But when a young woman staggers into their camp with her clothes covered in blood, their lives are changed forever.
A New York State of Fright: Horror Stories from the Empire State James Chambers, April Grey, and Robert Masterson, editors Hippocampus Press 2018-07-04 https://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/a-new-york-state-of-fright This anthology of New York horror stories by New York horror authors raises funds to benefit Girls Write Now, a local non-profit that pairs at-risk teen girls interested in writing with professional publishing mentors. All stories prominently feature locations or historical events from New York City or New York State.
That Which Grows Wild: 16 Tales of Dark Fiction Eric J. Guignard Cemetery Dance Publications 2018-07-01
Equal parts of whimsy and weird, horror and heartbreak, That Which Grows Wild by Eric J. Guignard is a collection of 16 short stories that traverse the darker side of the fantastic.
Skeletons in the Attic Michael Gore Dark Ink 2018-06-13 http://www.authormike.com/AuthorMik_1./Gore_Home_Page.html With fifteen dark and twisted tales, the mortician is back to terrify you once again. The author of the hit horror anthology, Tales from a Mortician, has masterfully weaved a new collection that will turn your stomach and have you checking under your bed, locking your doors, and leaving the lights on as you read.
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Thank you to all who listed, and please do share these free promotional listings provided to members each month. Make sure to fill out the New Release Form in the Members Only area of the HWA Web site by the 15th of each month to have your future releases posted in Recently Born of Horrific Minds! I’d love to include every book, but some were released too long ago to count as “recent,” so they may not be listed here, but appear on the “Members Books” section of horror.org/new-releases-2018/. Forward questions you might have using the form or regarding your forthcoming release to [email protected], and enjoy these fine reads!
48
49 Brain Matter
By HWAWeb | September 2018
JG Faherty
50 The Future (of Books) Looks Good
For many years now, I’ve been a mentor for the HWA (and recently, the MWA as well). That’s afforded me the opportunity to read some great stories and to help several writers achieve their goal of being professionally published, or being published at a higher level. And that’s been great, but all that work has been with adults. People who’ve been writing in some fashion for years, who know the basics. In short, they are writers; they’re just trying to become better writers.
What’s been even more rewarding to me is the work I’ve done over the years with young adult writers. Teens, and in some cases even tweens. I’ve lectured to several high school and middle school classes on writing, and I’ve spoken at many library events and reading groups. For the past three years, I’ve been a co- editor for SCRAWL, a teen writing program that my local county library association puts on. As part of that, I’ve gotten to proofread more than 70 poems, short stories, and essays from kids ages 13 to 18. The pieces are then compiled by the project lead into a book that’s published for all the local libraries.
This summer I added something new. I’m teaching a four-week genre fiction writing class for teens at my local library. I’ve got eight students, which the YA librarian tells me is well above average for this kind of summer program. They range from ninth grade to seniors, an equal mix of girls and boys. And the great thing is, they all want to be writers! Most of them have already written a bunch of short stories or attempted to write novels. Some do fan fiction, others do creepy horror, and one girl tends to stick with dark non- supernatural fiction based on what she sees and experiences at the high school.
Based on my work with SCRAWL, I expected these kids to be powerhouses of imagination, and I haven’t been disappointed. Each writing prompt I’ve assigned has delivered a huge range of story concepts, from vampires to drug addicts to science fiction to just plain weird stuff I can’t even classify.
Teens tend to lose interest quickly, so I’ve been hammering home my lessons by phrasing them in ways that appeal to what teen horror fans enjoy: gruesomeness. For instance, their favorite rule about editing is now “Kill your babies.” They couldn’t wait to get home and tell their parents that one. “Greg says we should always kill our babies!”
Another one that’s really been a hit is, “Your parents and friends don’t know crap about writing (unless they are professional writers).” This was to remind them that parents and friends don’t make good beta readers unless they can deliver honest assessments of your writing. Another favorite was the Pee Pee rule: Plot Pendulum. Keep it swinging back and forth, further and further, so that the highs and lows for the main characters get more extreme as the story moves along.
The questions they’ve asked have been good, and with a week still to go several of them already want to know if I’ll be teaching a follow-up class in the fall.
What does this have to do with the future of books? It tells me that there is no shortage of teens who want to be writers, and no shortage of talent among those teens. In the SCRAWL program, I’ve read at least five or six stories that, with a bit of editing, were good enough to be in any of today’s horror magazines or anthologies. I met a fifteen-year-old girl who’s already self-published three fantasy novels on Amazon and did her own cover artwork. And I’ve read poetry easily good enough to be in our HWA poetry showcase.
So while I think our mentor program is amazing, the real hope for the future we need to all be nurturing is sitting in school right now waiting for the final bell to ring so they can go home.
And write.
51 ###
My latest short story, “Devils in the Dark,” is part of the cryptid anthology Hidden Menagerie, Vol. 1, which can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Menagerie-Vol-Michael-Cieslak-ebook/dp/B07CNJ1Z89/.
In October, I’ll be appearing at the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival with more than 60 other authors, including Owen King, Christopher Golden, James A. Moore, Laird Barron, Grady Hendrix, Jeff Strand, Stephanie Wytovich, Brian Keene, Mary Sangiovanni, Cat Scully, and many others. https://www.christophergolden.com/merrimack-valley-halloween-book-festival-2018/
52 The Grumpy Grammarian: That Word
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Anthony Ambrogio
My friend, film critic Bruce Dettman, has kindly permitted me to quote from a lively essay he wrote some five or 10 years ago, called “That Word.”
He begins by talking about his physical check-up with a particularly perky young doctor.
“‘Your b.p. numbers are awesome!’ she squealed.
“I winced, trying my best not to show it. ‘Really?’ I asked.
“‘Really. Just awesome!’
53 “This was, of course, very good news. After I suffered a stroke a few years back and subsequently started taking a daily dose of very strong anti-clotting agents, the doctors and I had been most concerned about my blood pressure, which had become a problem for me when I hit my fifties, and had only increased over the years. But, for a few annoying seconds, these medical considerations were completely pushed aside, relegated to secondary status, as I reeled from her usage of the dreaded word and quickly began to conduct tabulations in my mind.”
You see, Bruce (who may be an even grumpier grammarian than I—high praise, indeed) keeps a journal devoted to recording when, how often, and in what context “awesome” is used in his presence.
On this particular day, a new record was established.
“The record now stood at two hours and 15 minutes into the day before I was first exposed to the noxious verbiage. … The previous high score (which had now been broken after only four days) was three hours and 18 minutes, set at the local video shop I regularly frequented. The winner on that particular occasion had been a blonde girl, perhaps 18, who had been working there for several months and who was enthusiastic for old Woody Allen films and the FRIDAY THE 13TH horror movies. But her use of ‘awesome’ didn’t come as a paean to ANNIE HALL or JASON LIVES. No—her contribution had to do with her description of some new, perfectly ordinary display racks the owners of the shop had recently purchased: ‘Aren’t they awesome?’”
Bruce notes that this usage was merely the first of ten that he heard that day, including “the kid at the grocery store who said a new potato chip flavor was awesome, my next-door neighbor who commented that the light drizzle of the night before was awesome, and a local newsman decreeing that the new color jersey on a local football team’s uniform was—you guessed it—awesome.”
Just as I might, Bruce wondered, “When did all of this start? What diabolical linguistic influence first propelled this word into the ongoing consciousness and already impoverished vocabularies of my fellow Americans? And how did it grow so quickly, with such volume and acceleration, that it now seems permanently lodged into the expressions and descriptions of everyone in the country if not the planet?”
He grasps for a reason, perhaps hoping that understanding might somehow alleviate the awesome pain: “If memory serves, I seem to recall the word being used and growing in popularity twenty or so years ago [i.e., in the 1980s], when people were making fun of and parodying the air-headed vacuous lingo of the so-called ‘Valley Girls’ of that era, but I paid little attention at the time and thought it nothing more than a passing fad like pet rocks and in earlier times the hula hoop. No such luck.” (Unfortunately, awesome has not gone the way of boss or radical but seems to have the staying power of cool.)
As Bruce explains, “the overuse of this word has rendered it unrecognizable, has neutered if not eliminated all its potency. The dictionary meaning [“To inspire, to fill with awe”] is now useless, totally outdated, and superfluous. What, I still keep asking myself despite my understanding that language, like everything else, periodically undergoes changes, has this to do with gravel, a new brand of foot powder, or a crop of radishes?”
Bruce laments that the proliferation and ubiquity of awesome, as misused by practically everybody, “has become the bane (well, one of them anyway) of my existence. An unsettling charge of electricity shoots through my body each time I hear the word—which suggests, given the volume of daily contact I experience with it, that I am nearly always in danger of electrocution. … I have this fear, this growing dread, that it won’t go away soon, perhaps ever. It’s a horrid and appalling possibility (but still not an awesome one).”
The intervening years have proven Bruce right, given the tenacity of the word.
54 He concludes with a statement of defiance and a serious philosophical question about awesome: “I reserve that description for the Big Bang theory, the Grand Canyon, and perhaps the young Sophia Loren. If you use awesome to describe, say, a new kind of dental floss, then what do you use to describe the Sistine Chapel?”
Well, since this is my column, I must add my two cents’ worth. The following is what I wrote to Bruce when he first showed me his piece:
If I haven’t told you before, I’ll tell you now that I agree completely about awesome. I have the same feeling that awesome should be reserved for majestic mountain peaks, overpowering gods—and Sophia Loren (or maybe Monica Bellucci in her heyday, though to my mind Loren remains perpetually awesome).
My recollection is that awesome was one of those slang, “repurposed” words that kids like my nephew (born 1977) started using, maybe sometime in the late 1980s, and then they just “grew up with it” and never grew out of it.
Despite your misgivings after hearing the title, I think that you would probably like the Oscar-nominated song “Everything Is Awesome” from THE LEGO MOVIE (2014). It’s a tongue-in-cheek ditty about conformity, so the filmmakers/songwriters are making fun of the phrase (and the entire concept of “awesomeness” as debased by most users). Perhaps not surprisingly the song didn’t win. (“Glory” from SELMA did.)
Of course, this discussion does give me pause. I had to stop and think, because—as much as I hate that people have taken a word of wonder like awesome and turned it into something meaning “nice,” I realize that, for several generations now, people (me included) have used great to mean “good.” While “great” still retains some of its power (because we can still speak of a great movie or great works of art and know that four-star “great” is better than three-and-a-half-star “very good” or three-star “good,” and because we can also speak of Oz, the Great and Powerful), “great” is used for more mundane things—not, I would argue, as much as “awesome” is, but still …
I have the feeling (but I can’t clearly cast my mind back that far) that kids started using “awesome” because they didn’t want to say “great,” and they thought that “awesome” was a novel word to use. Whatever the case, I can say unequivocally that the overuse of “awesome” is not great, in any sense of the word.
(Is it appropriate here to relate the anecdote—probably apocryphal—about John Wayne and the first part of awesome? The story goes that, on the set of THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD [1965]—that all-star retelling of the Christ story, starring Max Von Sydow as Jesus—John Wayne, who had a cameo as a Roman centurion, was rehearsing his one and only line, uttered after the crucifixion: “Truly, this was the son of God.” Director George Stevens asked the Duke if he could do it with a little more awe. So Wayne said, “Aww, truly, this was the son of God.”)
Thank you, and good day.
Anthony Ambrogio, [email protected]
55 Haunted Travels: The Bone Chapel
By HWAWeb | September 2018
56 57 58 Rena Mason
The Bone Chapel Zámecká, 284 03 Kutná Hora, Czechia Czech Republic Michael Kamp
59 60 Beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints is Sedlec Ossuary, also known as ”the Bone Church.” It’s a small Roman Catholic chapel, part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.
Back in 2000, I traveled to the Czech Republic with my then-girlfriend from my native Denmark. I like traveling in the former Eastern Bloc and have visited several of our neighbors to the east, including Poland and Russia.
This time we went to Prague—a city I have visited many times—where I wanted to show her the sights.
Prague is an incredible city, and, if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend a visit. Having been there before I was searching for some sites I hadn’t seen and stumbled upon a description of the Bone Church in Sedlec: A chapel decorated with thousands of bones sounded intriguing. I like morbid things, so we decided to go.
The chapel lies in a suburb of Kutná Hora, so we had to go by train and planned to spend the day.
History lesson: Back in 1278, Henry, the abbot of the local monastery, traveled to the Holy Land. There he visited Golgotha and gathered a small amount of dirt from this most holy of sites.
When he returned to Sedlec, he sprinkled this holy dirt around their local cemetery, so whoever was buried there would, in a sense, be buried at Golgotha.
61 Not surprisingly, this was a hit in medieval Europe.
People came from all over central Europe to be buried at Sedlec, and they had to expand the graveyard several times.
By the 14th century, the Black Plague and a few major wars made the number of burials swell, so a church constructed in the Gothic style was raised in the middle of the cemetery. At first, they simply stacked bones in the ossuary beneath the church, but in 1870 the Schwarzenberg family hired a woodcarver to put the bones in order. And the “Bone Church” came into being.
It is very obvious that an artist was hired, because the interior of the chapel is covered in morbid art.
From the outside, the Gothic church doesn’t seem different than other buildings from the period, but when you enter you are blown away.
Unlike the catacombs beneath Paris, the walls are not covered with bones. It is not a chapel made of bones, but one decorated with them.
Just inside the entrance, you come face to face with a huge chandelier made from bones. Also unlike the catacombs beneath Paris, the skeletons are utilized in these decorations. Skulls and thighbones are heavily featured alongside the hip bone.
Four huge mounds of bones occupy the four corners of the chapel, but your eyes are constantly drawn to the huge chandelier in the center. Every bone in the human body has been used in this massive creation.
To the left of the chapel, an enormous coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family is placed—made from the bones of children.
A sign is put up in front of the huge mounds of bones. It says: “What you are, we once were. What we are, you will one day become.”
Visiting the Bone Church, or Sedlec Ossuary as it is officially named, is a sobering experience. Watching the skeletons of small children used as adornment puts your own mortality into perspective. It’s so different from how we normally perceive death and all the actual dead there, that it takes some getting used to.
If you’re ever in Prague or just the vicinity of Kutná Hora, you must not miss this experience.
Bring the kids.
For more information, check out the Web site: https://sedlecossuary.com/.
62 Authors for the September KGB Reading Series
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel, hosts of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series, present two readers for September.
The first reader is Patrick McGrath, author of nine novels, including Asylum, an international bestseller, and Spider, which David Cronenberg filmed from McGrath’s script. He has also published three collections of short fiction, including most recently Writing Madness. He teaches a writing workshop at the New School and is currently at work on a novel about the Spanish Civil War. His most recent novel is The Wardrobe Mistress.
Siobhan Carroll, a Canadian author whose short stories have appeared in publications such as Lightspeed and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, will also be reading that night. A scholar as well as a writer of speculative fiction, she typically uses the fantastic to explore dark histories of empire, science, and the environment. In 2018, she has short stories out in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Ellen Datlow’s The Devil and the Deep anthology, and forthcoming in The Best of the Best Horror of the Year.
The readings will be held Wednesday, September 19, 7 p.m., at the KGB Bar, 85 East 4th St. (just off 2nd Ave., upstairs), New York City. For more information, please go to http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org.
Subscribe to the mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kgbfantasticfiction/.
63 Watchung’s Horror Watch
By HWAWeb | September 2018
64 Interpreted By Naching T. Kassa
Welcome, HWA faithful, to the Horror Watch. Watchung has just returned from SDCC (San Diego Calabeza Con) and he’s overjoyed. He had a booth at the convention and he sold three copies of PUMPKINS FROM PLANET P! This, combined with the sales he made at the Dumpsters behind Walmart, totals four! He now has enough money for the entire budget of the next film: PUMPKINS FROM PLANET P 2!
Watchung has asked me to thank all of you for your support. He also has an announcement to make. He will not return as adviser on PFPP 2. (AWWWW!) Instead, he will write, direct, produce, and star in the new movie!
While Watchung sets up his casting call, let’s see what he’s found for us this month.
TELEVISION
Cast changes come to every show, and horror programs are no exception. Here’s the latest on your favorite horror series.
AMERICAN GODS STARZ Leaving the show: Gillian Anderson (Media) Joining the show: Sakina Jaffrey (Mama-Ji), Kahyun Kim (replacing Anderson as New Media)
MIDNIGHT TEXAS NBC Joining the show: Trace Lysette (Celeste), Josh Kelly (Walker Chisum), Nestor Carbonell (Kai Lucero), Jaime Ray Newman (Kai’s wife, Patience)
SHADOWHUNTERS FREEFORM Joining the show: Luke Baines (replacing Will Tudor as the true form of Jonathan)
STRANGER THINGS
65 NETFLIX Larger role: Priah Ferguson (Lucas’s little sister) Joining the show: Cary Elwes (Mayor of Hawkins), Jake Busey (Bruce, newspaper reporter for The Hawkins Gazette)
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD AMC Joining the show: Aaron Stanford (Unknown Character)
THE WALKING DEAD AMC Leaving the show: Andrew Lincoln (Rick) Partial Appearance: Lauren Cohan (only appearing in the first half of the season) Joining the Show: Jon Bernthal (returning as Shane Walsh for season 9), Samantha Morton (Alpha)
STREAMING
STRANGER THINGS will take place during the summer of 1985. Watchung heard the show will be “darker and action-oriented” this season.
Now, on to movies! Watchung says there’s a bunch this month!
MOVIES
THEATRICAL RELEASES
SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ—Friday, September 7, Not Rated. British horror/comedy stars Simon Pegg.
THE NUN—Friday, September 7, Rated R. Spin-off of THE CONJURING 2, tells the story of a nun-turned- demon.
THE PREDATOR—Friday, September 14, Rated R. Sequel to the original film. It’s directed by creator Shane Black.
MANDY—Friday, September 14, Not Rated. Man seeks revenge on the cult that killed his wife. Stars Nicolas Cage.
THE HOUSE WITH THE CLOCK IN ITS WALLS—Friday, September 21, Rated PG. Directed by Eli Roth. Written by Eric Kripke (SUPERNATURAL). After the deaths of his parents, a young boy goes to live with his warlock uncle.
THE RETURN OF THE KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE IN 3D—Friday, September 28, Not Rated. Sequel to KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE.
HELL FEST—Friday, September 28, Not Rated. A killer stalks his victims in a Halloween theme park.
COMING ATTRACTIONS
South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho announced plans to make TRAIN TO BUSAN 2. Look for more zombies in the future!
DVDs
66 HOSTILE—Tuesday, September 4, Not Rated. A girl finds herself on her own after an epidemic wipes out most of the world.
HE’S OUT THERE—Monday, September 24, Rated R. A mother and her daughters are menaced by a psychopath at an isolated lake house.
VOD
MARA—Friday, September 7, Not Rated. An investigator discovers the culprit in a man’s murder is a succubus.
THE TOYBOX—Tuesday, September 18, Rated R. An entity follows a family on a road trip across America.
CYNTHIA—Tuesday, September 18, Not Rated. Horror/comedy about a couple and their attempt to have a child at any cost.
VIDEO GAMES
No new horror games this month. However, Watchung does have some Coming Attractions.
DAYS GONE, the zombie game that was supposed to be released in 2017, will not appear in stores this year. Look for it in February of 2019.
RESIDENT EVIL 2: REMAKE will arrive in January of 2019. It will be released in PS4, Xbox One, and PC formats.
That’s it for this edition of Watchung’s Horror Watch. Our favorite demonic pumpkin would like to remind you of two things. First, no entertainment, not even the video games, could exist without writers. And, second, if there’s horror news out there, Watchung is watching!
Special thanks to the following websites: wheresthejump.com, dreadcentral.com, bloodydisgusting.com, ihorror.com, thisishorror.co.uk, dvdreleasedates.com, promotehorror.com, dailydead.com, variety.com, horrorfreaknews.com, collider.com, moviepilot.com, cinemablend.com, tvline.com, indiewire.com, ew.com, movieweb.com, joblo.com, nerdmuch.com, imdb.com, rottentomatoes.com, gamespot.com, screenrant.com, movieinsider.com, moviefone.com, telegraph.co.uk/gaming, eonline.com, gameranx.com, horrornews.net, and wikipedia.com.
67 Frightful Fun
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Donna K. Fitch
Pandemic. Published by Z-Man Games. Written by: Matt Leacock. Players: 2-4. Ages: 8 years+. Playing time: 60 minutes.
The smell of alcohol and some other chemical is pungent and strong, tingling the inside of your dry nostrils. You don’t usually notice it, but tonight you’re just so tired. A shared glance with your coworkers confirms they’re feeling it too. Graham wipes an arm across her forehead, her eyes red with fatigue. Chang shakes his head, his lips moving as he calculates the latest dosage. You catch a breath, hoping for that telltale little
68 gleam in his eyes. Maybe he’s a better poker player than you thought. His shoulders slump.
“Not this time, Wykof,” Chang says. “No joy.”
Graham’s intern slams the door open. “Dr. Graham,” she says. “We just lost contact with the Bogota Research Outpost.”
That’s modern horror for you—scientists battling to prevent unknown infectious diseases from spreading across the world as they search for a way to eradicate them once and for all. Sound fun? It’s frightful fun! (Roll credits.)
In the multi-award-winning board game Pandemic, you and one to three other players take on roles of professionals in the fight against infectious disease. These professionals have particular skills that make them uniquely useful; for example, the Medic can remove all cubes of a single color when treating a city, and can administer known cures for free. The Operations Expert may build a research station in her or his current city for one action. Other roles are Dispatcher, Scientist, and Researcher.
The board is a stylized representation of the world, with paths connecting major hotspots such as Atlanta, Bogota, Chennai, Tokyo, and St. Petersburg. The “cubes” mentioned above represent outbreaks of disease, where players must travel to eradicate the diseases before they spread further. Two decks of cards determine events, one for the normal spread of infection and one for special occurrences. Event cards include Government Grant (add a research station to any city), Airlift (move one pawn to any city), and One Quiet Night (skip the next infected cities step). The most feared card is “Epidemic!,” which speeds up the rate of infection. Many a game has been lost because of this card.
Each turn, as mentioned above, includes a step in which cards are drawn to determine where an outbreak next occurs. Cooperation is the key to success as specialists race to build research stations, discover cures and treat the infected populace. Having a strategy goes a long way toward success in Pandemic.
69 So why is this a horror game? The theme of modern fear of plague and pestilence overtaking the world is integral to the game. But the gameplay itself is gripping. Tensions rise as the number of cubes multiply in cities. “What do I do?” is the cry from some players as, inevitably, one player becomes the chief strategist (at least in the games of Pandemic I’ve played). If your team is able to defeat the forces of inexorable and invisible doom, players visibly sag and sigh with relief at the end. If pandemic sweeps the globe, fists are shaken and “if only we’d done this” breaks out. The real world becomes a bit scarier, even if for a little while.
Pandemic is a fun and exciting game, but to be honest, I’m not sure if I like it. I’ve probably played it four or five times; we won maybe twice. The temptation is there for a really competitive player to take over and direct everyone else’s movements. It’s an esthetically pleasing game. The pieces are nicely made; not as chrome-y as Arkham Horror, but the acrylic cubes and disease markers add to the overall play. The cards are evocative of caution, and make liberal use of computer text and CDC symbolism.
I haven’t played them, but several sequels and other versions of Pandemic are available, such as Pandemic: Legacy. This last game takes the form of a TV season, with an overarching plot throughout.
If modern horror appeals to you, and you’d like a crack at saving the world from pestilence, Pandemic is the game for you. Find out more at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/30549/pandemic, and buy the game at https://amzn.to/2P9Wm5x.
70 Forbidden Words (And When to Use Them)
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Lawrence Berry
God allows the devil to afflict sinners More bitterly than the just.
Beyond The Grave (2)
Our column this month discusses the vocabulary of witches, those who through inclination, or from a force of circumstance, have sought out and mastered arcane knowledge. The lore of witches can be divided into two periods, the first extending far back into human prehistory and ending with the Inquisition. The trials and executions of those deemed to be witches by judicial authorities were in great part about the definition of witch-like behavior, the possibility of renouncing pacts with demonic spirits and thereby expressing penitence, and the legal remedies for those individuals beyond salvation through grace.
The column concludes with this question: can witches be proved to exist through vocabulary?
White Magic
The biblical story of the Witch of Endor shows the earliest perception of witches as gifted and good people able to exercise preternatural abilities for those in need.
In ancient Palestine, King Saul was faced with fighting a great army of Philistines and had prayed for guidance. When no dreams came from God directing his actions, he consulted with the Pharisees and religious counselors of his court, who were unable to provide insight into the battle ahead. In a demonstration of fealty to God, he had earlier in his reign exiled all witches and magicians from his land. He asked those advisors closest to him to find him a witch of great enough power to raise the dead and was told there was a woman of Endor who could see to his needs. In this instance, she would have been highly
71 favored and hidden by the members of her community against Saul’s soldiers.
Saul went to her in disguise, which she saw through, and asked why he’d come to her for help, desiring to put her to death? He swore no harm would come to her if she raised the spirit of the Prophet Samuel from her pit of divination (essentially a fire pit fed specific herbs and rare types of wood, the spirit taking form in the smoke). The Witch of Endor took pity on Saul and raised the spirit of Samuel who was angry at having been awakened (it was believed at this time that the dead progressed through nine stages before ascending to the afterlife, each time returning to earth as a revenant). Samuel told Saul he had angered God and rule of his kingdom had been given to another. On the next day, he and all his sons would die and join Samuel in death. Distraught, he threw himself on the floor in an agony of fear. The Witch slaughtered a calf and made food for Saul, who had not eaten for two days and was without strength. She counseled and fed him, restoring his vigor, and sent him to his fate with renewed courage.
More than any other passage in the scripture, this has caused debate. The Witch’s powers predated Christianity and represented a faith and consummate talents separate from Judaism. While witchery was a forbidden art, punished by Saul himself, the art of witchcraft was viewed as a real science and a last avenue of hope. It is important to note that necromancy was a power she possessed, and it did not involve pacts, demonic agencies, and there is no reference to Satan or fallen angels.
Britain’s Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951, and Gerald Gardner began the Wicca movement using the work of anthropologist Margaret Murray who had written extensively on a belief system called the Old Religion (an enduring faith that extends across the ages in secrecy). Through Gardner and his followers, the innocent practice of witchcraft as a form of earth magic became ascendant again. The primary commandment, called the Wiccan Rede, states, “An’ it harm none, do what you will.”
Old Religion: Witchcraft based on pagan beliefs and practices, predating human history.
Wicca: Old English for witches (Old English extends from the 5th to 11th centuries).
Wiccian: To work sorcery; to bewitch.
White Magic: Magic used for positive goals, such as healing, blessings, good luck, and abundance. Any magic used for beneficence.
Tutelary Spirits: Indwelling spirits that provide guidance and influence.
Toadstone: A gem much prized by Wiccan practitioners, found in the brain cavity of certain toads. Used as an amulet of protection, especially in the protection of newborns. Changes colors when in the presence of malign influences. Able to detect poison in food by a shift in the shade.
Sympathetic Magic: Magical power exerted from a distance through connection to a person’s hair, bodily elements such as fingernails and clothes.
Poppet: A doll used in sympathetic magic, containing personal items from a human subject.
Inner Planes Contacts: Ancient gods who tutor witches in advanced forms of magic; an all-enveloping power and intelligence that comes from within.
Black Magic
Malleus Maleficarum, or the Witches’ Hammer, was the document used by witch hunters in the late 1400s to
72 find, bind, and bring witches to trial. It is defined by the rudest form of circumstantial evidence. The opening quote comes from Peter of Palude, one of the sources for the book. Peter uses the circumstance of a young nobleman who was unable to consummate his union with his new bride. Using five methods for determining whether or not witchcraft was responsible, Peter concluded that the couple was under a malevolent spell. 1) the devil may keep devout individuals from committing acts of love, (2) the devil can nullify legitimate passion, (3) the devil can make a woman appear loathsome to a man who loves her, (4) the devil can prevent erections, and (5) the devil can prevent orgasm and conception. As a final point, Peter is responsible for our opening quote. He felt it was possible to ascertain who was a witch by who suffered the worst luck and injury.
There’s considerable black humor to be found in these three individuals discussing which young woman in the neighborhood was practicing witchcraft secretly and preventing the husband from fulfilling the legitimate expectations of his new wife. I imagine some suspects came to mind.
One of the dependable techniques used for discovery was to torture someone under suspicion and see if they confessed. The result of using this form of witch divination was a veritable plague of witches.
Research into both the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials reduces down to a certain population in a neighborhood being targeted as witches and their money, property, and possessions being seized. Then, as now, it was about the money. Faith, or lack thereof, had little to do with it.
Witchery: Sorcery, enchantment, witchcraft.
Archer-Witch: A witch employed by a weapon-smith or nobleman to bless weapons and confer on them godlike power. If accused of this crime, the witch was excommunicated for a year during which time they were afforded the opportunity to show penitence and be forgiven. At the opposite end of the spectrum, an evil breed of the archer.
Archer-Witches would use a blessed arrow to defame holy statues and objects—being holy they were subject to the same injuries as flesh and suffered the same pain. Upon proof of such an act, death was the punishment.
Witch-Midwife: A witch who kills newborn children or offered them up to the fiend for possession.
Devil-Witches: Witches possessed by devils seeking to lure the innocent into the craft and company of witches.
Incubi: A spirit or demon who takes on a human male shape with whom witches have intercourse.
Succubi: A spirit or demon who takes on a human female shape with whom male witches have intercourse.
Note on the Generation of a Child: While both incubi and succubi are phantasms rather than manifestations, both have the ability to capture and fertilize the necessary elements and generate pregnancies of offspring inspired by evil. This is viewed as an event of some rarity.
Were-Witch: Chapter Eight, Part 2, of Malleus Maleficarum, debates at some length whether or not witches can change men into beasts or other animals. The ability to do this is an admitted power, prestidigatatory transmutation. Since only God can create perfect beings it is suggested that a witch might transmute a man into an imperfect creature such as a toad or bird. Further, the authors conjecture that perhaps the act of transmutation might be achieved through an act of imagination or glamour, the difference being that imagination is entirely of the mind, while utilizing glamour would require an exterior subject to work upon. Their opinion is a firm maybe, under some conditions.
73 Pythonesse: Some religious authorities refer to the Witch of Endor as a Pythonesse, a being neither human nor animal, with potentially lethal occult powers.
Witch Addiction: One of the founding principles of the Inquisition was that the practice of witchcraft was addictive and that the temptation for a witch to backslide and pull others into the worship of Satan through her fall was a matter of some seriousness.
Devil’s Marks, Devil’s Tokens: Evidence of witchcraft was sometimes sought by shaving a suspect’s entire body looking for evidentiary symbols showing that a pact had been made with the devil. Considerable latitude was allowed as to whether an unusual mole of defect might be a token.
Magical Alphabet: For a purist, the true magical alphabet comes solely from Sefer Raziel or the Book of the Angels. This is an ancient grimoire of divine origin that has the names of the angels, what their purpose is, the true names of God, the language of animals, and the secret angelic alphabet that governs all things. In actual practice, there were numerous codes used to encrypt writings for obvious reasons. Because deciphering such texts was difficult and problematic, the evidence of anything being written in a magical language was equal evidence that a pact had been made.
Do Witches Exist from the Viewpoint of Vocabulary?
The answer is yes, based on the frequency of use.
We’ve gone on a number of explorations in this column into how new words are introduced into the dictionary. We know that inclusion comes down to a spontaneous cascade of usage from many sources showing up in printed and electronic publications. Words grow obsolete for the opposite reason. Writers and correspondents cease to use them with any regularity.
When we began with the Witch of Endor, we time traveled back before the invention of the printing press into the era of handwritten scrolls. The word-form witch had much to do with divination and illusion in early history and this reflects an entity consistent over thousands of years that continues to endure and be relevant in the Wicca movement.
The odd cross-current in definition occurs with the persecutions of witches and the attempt to vilify their nature. Put simply, if you’re going to burn one of your neighbors to death, you better have a good reason, and the religious writers of the time provided one. A side effect is that the vocabulary shifted to provide an evil element of some sophistication and sensationalism still used in contemporary fiction and film.
What’s interesting is that the Witch of Endor, blessed by a dying king, most likely endured and passed on her knowledge to another that may have grown stronger in the Old Religion, who passed on more to the next witch in succession. That testament would be composed of thousands of volumes now reflecting a secret knowledge of great magical ability. Somewhere, it’s quite possible, there’s a quiet house where all that wisdom resides, waiting for a time without racism or prejudice. This is the image we should end with. The enduring strength of magic.
Attributions: A Delusion Of Satan by Frances Hill. Dictionary of Superstitions by David Pickering. Magic and Alchemy by Rosemary Ellen Guiley. The Malleus Maleficarum by Sprenger and Kramer.
74 It’s a Strange, Strange World
By HWAWeb | September 2018
JG Faherty
75 Let Darwin Sort ‘Em Out
Are kids today getting dumber? That’s a conversation I had with some friends recently. If you read the news, it seems like it. Weird challenges, dumb pranks. Every day brings a new story that makes you shake your head.
But is it mental devolution or something else? A growing desire to be a YouTube sensation, to have that moment of fame, knowing that if you go viral you could end up with your own reality TV show and a million dollars in the bank. Or perhaps it’s a reaction to how society has devolved, an “I give up” attitude. Or maybe the government has put something in the sodas and energy drinks for mind control. At this point, anything seems possible.
Whatever the cause, here are some examples of the dumb things teens have been doing this year:
1. The Tide Pod Challenge. We’ve all heard of this one. Kids eat Tide detergent pods and then let the colored foam spill out of their mouths. Some even try to outdo each other and see how many they can eat. Naturally, this lands them in the hospital. But it’s not as bad as the next item. 2. The Hot Water Challenge. A recent twist, this involves pouring scalding water over your head. Or drink it. In some instances, kids have poured it on their sleeping friends. And then they end up in the hospital with their skin peeling off. 3. Condom Snorting. Yep, you read that right. The object is to snort an unrolled condom up your nose and then pull it out of your mouth. As you can imagine, this often goes horribly wrong. 4. The Deodorant Challenge. How this one started, I can’t imagine. You hold a spray can of deodorant an inch away from your bare arm and spray it until the aerosol burns your skin away. Teens are doing this over and over until their arms are covered in circular burn marks. 5. The Eraser Challenge. Much like the deodorant dare, this is a skin burning fun-time activity where you rub an eraser as hard as you can across your skin to see what kind of burn mark it leaves. 6. Dog Food vs. Real Food. The dumb teen version of a game show. Contestants are blindfolded and then fed different types of human food and dog food, and they have to guess which is which. 7. Bananas and Sprite. A test of how strong your stomach is. You eat two bananas and then chug Sprite until you puke. Whoever chugs the most (or doesn’t barf) wins. Parents, don’t let the kids play this one on the carpet! 8. Cinnamon Dare. Seems harmless. Kids dare each other to eat a spoonful of cinnamon. But the results usually are coughing, vomiting, and burning mouth and eyes for hours. 9. The Ice and Salt Dare. Pour salt on arm. Place ice on salt. Press firmly. What happens? After a few minutes, you end up with a major burn and possibly permanently dead nerves in that spot. 10. Duct Tape. A person is wrapped in duct tape until only his or her eyes, nose, and mouth are visible. Then they have to try and escape. Can you say ouch? 11. The Water Bubble. Snorting condoms wasn’t enough, so the new thing is to fill a condom with water, then place it over someone’s head and see how long they can hold their breath. 12. The Corn Drill. Object is, who can eat corn on the cob while it’s spinning on a cordless drill? First prize is teeth flying through the air! 13. The Eyeball Challenge. Just when you think things couldn’t get any dumber. Teens are pouring vodka into their eyes, because it’s supposed to “get you drunk faster.” Remember the good old days when kids just soaked tampons in vodka and stuck them in their butts? At least no one went blind that way!
So the next time someone tells you you’re doing something dumb, just remember—nothing we did as kids comes close to today’s challenges!
76 Until next time …
Stay informed on all my demented ramblings … http://www.facebook.com/jgfaherty, jgfaherty- blog.blogspot.com, and http://www.twitter.com/jgfaherty.
77 HWA Events – Current for 2018
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Angel Hiott, Events Coordinator
September 16 – Brooklyn Book Festival; Brooklyn Borough Hall and Vicinity; Brooklyn, NY. Contact Jim Chambers, [email protected]. October 4-7 – New York City ComicCon; Jacob Javits Center, New York, NY. Contact Jim Chambers, [email protected]. October 27-28 – Frightmare in the Falls; Scotiabank Convention Centre; Niagara Falls. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (October 27), 11 a.m.-4 p.m. (October 28). Contact Seph Girón, [email protected].
Just make sure to get those applications in to JG Faherty ([email protected]) so he can approve them! If you know of an event you would like the HWA to consider attending, please fill out the approval form: http://horror.org/subhub/index.php?sid=95628. Greg and Brad will review it for approval.
78 79 In The Spooklight
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Michael Arruda
(This column is a reprint from 2010.)
80 Vincent Price made a career playing over-the-top hammy and dramatic characters in colorful period pieces in the 1960s. He’s at it again in THE OBLONG BOX (1969), a film in which he is paired with Christopher Lee.
THE OBLONG BOX is loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story of the same name—very loosely, as in just borrowing the title …
The story begins in Africa, with Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson) tortured by natives, his face apparently scarred beyond recognition. Markham’s brother Sir Julian Markham (Vincent Price) arrives too late to save him.
They return to England, with Sir Edward now a crazed lunatic. Sir Julian is forced to keep his brother locked in chains in an upstairs bedroom of their mansion. With the help of a family friend Samuel Trench (Peter Arne), Edward plans his escape. They hire an African witch doctor to supply Edward with a drug to imitate death. The plan is for Edward to be removed from the house as a “corpse”—only to be revived and rescued later by Trench.
However, Julian immediately seals Edward’s lifeless body inside a coffin and unknowingly buries his brother alive. Trench decides rescuing Edward from a premature burial is too dangerous and out of the question, and so he leaves him for dead.
Meanwhile, Dr. Neuhartt (Christopher Lee) has been paying grave robbers to supply him with bodies for his research. As luck would have it, his grave robbers dig up Edward. When Neuhartt opens the coffin inside his laboratory, Edward attacks him but doesn’t kill him, deciding he could use the doctor as an accomplice.
Edward then dons a crimson hood and seeks revenge against both Trench and his brother, going on a bloody rampage through the countryside, slitting the throats of his victims. Eventually, Julian discovers his brother is still alive, setting the stage for the final confrontation between brothers, as well as the obligatory unmasking of Edward’s hideous face.
THE OBLONG BOX has long been considered too long, too slow, and too rambling by critics, but I’ve always liked its intricate plot with its many pathways. It takes the viewer along a very creepy ride, with premature burials, African voodoo, a masked maniac, and bloody murders.
THE OBLONG BOX was supposed to have been directed by Michael Reeves, the talented young director who had just finished another Price movie, THE CONQUEROR WORM (1968)—also known as THE
81 WITCHFINDER GENERAL—a film that had been very well received. Sadly, Reeves died before he could direct THE OBLONG BOX, and so the directing duties went to Gordon Hessler.
A lot has been made of Hessler’s lackluster direction of this picture, and I would have to agree. In spite of its strong story, there really aren’t a lot of memorable scenes in THE OBLONG BOX. On the contrary, there are a lot of weak scenes. The bloody killings are tepid and the blood obviously fake, and the final confrontation between Edward and Julian is also a disappointment, as is the unmasking scene. The make-up job on Edward’s face is embarrassingly routine. Still, Hessler can direct. Five years later, he would be at the helm of THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1974), one of the best of the Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movies.
The acting is just okay. With Vincent Price, you get exactly what you would expect, an over-the-top hammy performance. As always, he’s fun to watch. Christopher Lee is cast against type as the decent Dr. Neuhartt, but sadly, there’s not a lot for him to do with this role.
Alister Williamson is a disappointment as Sir Edward Markham. As the main villain, Edward should dominate this movie. He doesn’t. Had Christopher Lee played Edward, THE OBLONG BOX would have been a much better movie. Of course, I can understand Lee not always wanting to play the bad guy. Trouble is, he’s just so damned good at it! I wish he had played the role.
Speaking of bad guys, probably the most memorable performance in THE OBLONG BOX belongs to Peter Arne as Samuel Trench. Trench is the slimiest character in this movie, and Arne plays him to the hilt.
But the most disappointing part of this movie is that in spite of the pairing of the two horror superstars, Price and Lee only share one brief scene together. Rip-off!
And the final nail in the coffin—heh, heh—regarding THE OBLONG BOX is that its ending doesn’t make any sense. It’s one of those endings where you see it and you know it was shot just to have a shocking last scene, even though based upon what has happened before, it isn’t logical.
But even with all these flaws, I still like THE OBLONG BOX, for the simple reason that I love its plot, an exciting roller coaster ride of frights and thrills. The screenplay was written by Lawrence Huntington, with additional dialogue by Christopher Wicking.
THE OBLONG BOX is an example of a movie that succeeds because of the strength of its writing. The direction is fair and the acting okay, but it’s the writing that lifts this one to memorable status, which is a rare thing in movies, a medium dominated by directors and actors.
82 HWA Market Report #276
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Kathryn Ptacek
Note: Eraserhead Press is closed to submissions until April 1, 2019. Grievous Angel has been shut down by the editor.
ANTHOLOGY ROW
Artemis Rising 5: Hecate’s Pentacle—See Web site. “During the month of September, PseudoPod seeks submissions to celebrate Artemis Rising, a special month-long event across the Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by women and nonbinary authors in genre fiction.”
83 “Stepping in as guest editors for our fifth annual Artemis Rising event is PseudoPod Associate Editor Cecilia Dockins and Nightlight Editor Tonia Thompson.”
What is Artemis Rising?: “Please read the full announcements about the Artemis Rising event at Escape Artists Prime. http://escapeartists.net/news/artemis-rising/”
What to Submit:
* “Send in your best original horror fiction between 2000–6000 words. Please see our general submission guidelines [rights and submission format included]. https://pseudopod.submittable.com/submit”
* “Pays 6¢/word.”
* “You can send PseudoPod one submission for Artemis Rising. Submit a second story to us when we open for general submissions in October.”
* “While we’ll be accepting a limited number of stories for Artemis Rising, all stories will be considered for PseudoPod’s general calendar.”
* “Original stories preferred, but we try to run one or two reprints every year as part of Artemis Rising.”
How to Submit: “Start writing now, and keep an eye out for a special Artemis Rising Submittable portal. Submissions will be open for the month of September.”
Artemis Rising Q&A:
Q: “If a story has been rejected by PseudoPod in the past, can I submit it to PseudoPod AR?”
A: “No.”
Q: “If a story has multiple authors, do they all have to meet the AR criteria?”
A: “Yes.”
Q: “If I’ve already submitted an AR story, can I submit another I wrote with a co-author to the same podcast’s AR?”
A: “No.”
Q: “If I have a story on submission to a podcast, can I submit a different story to that podcast’s AR while the first one is still in the queue? Or vice versa?”
A: “Yes.”
Q: “Can I submit a rejected AR story to the same podcast’s non-AR submissions pile?”
A: “No, because AR editors may refer your story to the show’s regular editors at their discretion. Otherwise please take a rejection as a rejection of the story from the venue for all purposes.”
[E-mail: Submissions: Link at Web site; http://pseudopod.org/2018/08/15/artemis-rising-5/]. Opens: September 1, 2018; Closes: September 30, 2018.
84 Welcome to the HWA!
By HWAWeb | September 2018
James Chambers
The HWA extends a warm welcome to the following new and returning members who have joined in the past month. For any questions about membership, please contact [email protected].
Marc Morgenstern [email protected] Active
Christopher Grey [email protected] Active
Marie Lanza [email protected] Active
Brandon Scott [email protected] Active
Max Sparber [email protected] Active
Mason Morgan [email protected]
86 Affiliate
Charlotte Platt [email protected] Affiliate
Phil Sloman [email protected] Affiliate
Jeremy Wagner [email protected] Affiliate
Megan Eccles [email protected] Supporting
Bryan Tranka [email protected] Supporting
John Philip Johnson [email protected] Active
J.F. Penn [email protected] Active
Thomas Thomas [email protected] Supporting
Crowley Barns [email protected] Active
G.R. Jerry [email protected] Supporting
Cat Scully [email protected] Supporting
Jim Kelly [email protected] Affiliate
Eli Ryder [email protected]
87 Affiliate
Jane Dillard [email protected] Supporting
John Byron [email protected] Active
James Watts [email protected] Active
Marc Librescu [email protected] Affiliate
Christina Kelley [email protected] Supporting
Jessica Nettles [email protected] Supporting
LH Moore [email protected] Active
Alison J. McKenzie [email protected] Affiliate
Michael Aloisi/Dark Ink Publishing [email protected] Associate (Corporate)
Lisa Delane [email protected] Supporting
Titan Frey [email protected] Supporting
Ryan Lieske [email protected] Supporting
David Tamanini [email protected]
88 Supporting
89 Advertisements
By HWAWeb | September 2018
The Nightmarchers by J. Lincoln Fenn
90 Straight to Hell
By HWAWeb | September 2018
Greg Chapman
91